Chapter Nine
Sometime around midnight, Delilah and I dragged ourselves to our guest suite. Her feet scraped across the ground until they tangled in the rug. With a yelp, she fell forward, and I held out my arms to catch her.
Thump!
I blinked and looked down at the floor where she’d fallen, several feet away from me.
She mumbled something into the rug.
“What?”
Turning her head toward me, she enunciated, “Fitz is a tyrant.”
Choosing our potential quest wasn’t enough.
As soon as everyone had narrowed their options down, Fitz plunged us straight into research.
What would we need to fight this threat?
How long is the journey and what is the best route?
What additional dangers might we face along the way? For every. Single. Quest.
Not that we could answer all the questions.
Fitz had a large collection of maps and bestiaries, books on medicine and herbs, but that meant we had more material to slog through.
He would have kept us there all night if Maximus hadn’t knocked a teacup onto one of the maps when he’d fallen asleep.
Fitz decided it was safer for his books if we stopped for the night.
“He just wants us to survive,” I replied.
“How are we supposed to survive if he kills us with research before the quest begins?”
“Nobody’s ever died from research.”
“Tell that to the Head of the Chambord Scholar’s Association.”
My brow furrowed and I collapsed into one of the sitting room chairs, too tired to trek all the way to the bedroom. “Who?”
Delilah flipped herself over and gazed up at the ceiling for a moment before her eyes drooped shut. “He wrote half of the bestiaries in Fitz’s collection. He died while researching the habits of Giant Bats.”
“Did they eat him?”
“Yes, but only after he had a heart attack from overwork.”
Maybe research could kill people. “Where’d you learn that?”
“In the footnotes of his last book. It was finished by his assistant.”
What a dedicated assistant. “How did the assistant survive the bats?”
Only a soft, snuffling snore answered me. She’d regret falling asleep on the floor in the morning.
Or … I could be a good cousin and help her to bed.
I remained in the chair for a long time, too tired to move, too uncomfortable to sleep.
Finally, I sighed and shoved myself to my feet, hoping the forced burst of energy would trick my body into staying awake.
I prodded Delilah with my foot, waking her up enough for the two of us to work together to settle her in one of the bedrooms.
She fell asleep again the second her head hit the pillow.
I found my own bed and fell onto it face down. I could have slept fully clothed if my belt wasn’t poking into my stomach. Groaning, I turned over and unhooked the belt, dropping it to the floor.
Any second now, I would fall asleep.
Except my feet seemed swollen in my boots, everything too tight. Sighing, I sat up, unlaced my boots, threw them across the room, and flopped back onto the bed.
Two minutes later, I rolled out of my jacket, leaving it beside me. Then I rolled the other way to escape the confines of my waistcoat.
When did I become a pampered prince who couldn’t sleep through slight discomfort? What the fuck will I do during the quest?
Quests involved camping. Camping meant lumpy grounds and sleeping in your clothes in case you were attacked in the middle of the night.
Determined to push past the discomfort, I squeezed my eyes shut and clutched the edge of my pillow. At some point, I finally settled into sleep.
A low, strained voice ripped me out of my fragile sleep. “Dammit.”
My eyes snapped open, and I sat up in bed. Something moved in the shadows, an odd, jerky hop that made the scene significantly less sinister. I reached over to the nightstand and fumbled with a lamp.
Before I turned it on, a low, menacing voice ordered, “Stop, Treasure.”
“First of all, fuck you. Second, I’m not following orders from someone who snuck into my room in the dead of night.” I finally lit the bedside lamp and held it up to view the room, not that it helped much.
A black cloak obscured the intruder—classic evil mage attire. Or, in this case, classic evil apprentice.
“Oh, it’s you again.”
“Why is this room so messy?” he asked, kicking aside one of my boots. “I could have fallen and broken my neck.”
“Now you know how I felt when you dropped a tree on me.”
He swept forward, cloak billowing ominously behind him. “That was a controlled situation. This is simply your inability to clean up after yourself.”
“Did you need something or are you only here to insult me for fun?”
Hands on his hips, the apprentice stood at the foot of my bed, looming over me. “Have you successfully convinced the champions to embark on a quest?”
I rubbed my temples and sighed. “I’m too tired for your looming to intimidate me. You might as well sit down so I don’t strain my neck looking up at you.”
He remained standing for a minute before finally giving in and sitting next to me. The mattress dipped from his added weight.
Seeing him cooperate so easily, I decided to push my luck. “And take the hood off.”
The sharpness of his glare pierced me through the shadows. “You don’t need to see my face.”
I rolled my eyes. “Why does it matter? I’ve already seen it.”
He scoffed. “That was a disguise. Anonymity is important in our line of work. I don’t expose my face unless necessary.”
Well now I really needed to see it. Was he hideous? Plain? As old as the farmer he’d pretended to be? Or did he resemble the old man, too silly to take seriously? “Hood off or I don’t say a word.”
A hand reached out of the darkness and grasped my jaw firmly enough to feel the idents of each finger. “Speak willingly before I make you.”
Goosebumps dotted my arms and every part of me tensed in anticipation, eager to see exactly how he would follow through on his threat. I leaned slightly into his touch, lips primed to form more taunting words to push him over the edge—
What the fuck? Gritting my teeth and suppressing whatever the fuck that was, I grabbed his wrist and squeezed until his fingers loosened. “Touch me again, and one of us will scream loud enough to wake the whole castle.”
He released me and I dropped his hand. After a long moment of silence, he finally lowered the hood. The lamplight danced over his face, illuminating some features while obscuring others. A straight nose, the shadow of eyelashes, and yellowish hair brushing his shoulders. “Satisfied?”
Fuck no. I wanted to grab his head and hold it up to the light to examine every line of his face.
Maybe if I could convince myself he was plain or unattractive, his threats would stop pushing the wrong buttons.
But he’d offered this little bit of himself so reluctantly that I decided not to push him further.
“Everyone agreed to the quest, but we haven’t decided on the target yet. ”
His lips pursed in a thin line. “You’re supposed to lead them to the master.”
A lump formed in my throat, but I pretended annoyance as I explained, “I’m working on it, but this job requires subtlety.
Unlike you, I can’t swan around in a fancy cloak and intimidate people into doing what I want.
They have to trust me, which means I can’t autocratically declare ‘we’re going to fight the Lord of Grimnight.
’ It has to seem like a group decision.”
He mulled that over. “What other quests are they considering?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might.”
Sighing, I tried to remember who had suggested what.
“Delilah wants to fight the Star-Devouring Horror terrorizing South Fenn. Maximus suggested a non-magical tyrant oppressing a small kingdom. Angelica suggested a necromancer who is amassing their own skeleton army. Fitz thinks only a classic evil mage will fit the parameters for the defense spell, so he’s suggested a few lower-level ones. ”
“Then why haven’t you convinced him to face our master?”
My eye twitched when he said ‘our’ master so easily, like it was natural for the old man to control both of us.
“Because there are no official quests to defeat the Lord of Grimnight. None of the pamphlets even mention him. The best I could do was suggest we break the curse on the Grimnight Forest, which will at least get the champions close to the lair. But you have to admit, breaking a curse isn’t as impressive as slaying beasts or thwarting necromancers. ”
He tapped his fingers on the bed, the tips barely brushing my thigh. A little thrill shivered through me, and I pictured his delicate fingers traveling higher, slow and teasing. I shifted my leg away from him, but he was too absorbed in his thoughts to notice. “When do you officially decide?”
“When we meet with the Good Wizard. He needs to sanction the quest and confirm that the evil is ‘great and terrible.’”
He nodded. “Very well.” Whatever conclusion he came to, he didn’t bother to elaborate.
When he stood up to leave, I held up a hand to stop him. “We’re not finished yet.”
He frowned and I suddenly understood why he didn’t want to remove the hood. Long eyelashes and pouty lips did not make an intimidating combination. “Did you omit something important?”
“No, but we”—I gestured between the two of us—“need to find another way to communicate. You can’t chop down a tree or break into my room every time you want to chat.”
“I will think of something.” Then he lifted the hood to hide his face again and turned on his heel with a dramatic swoosh.
I expected him to fade into the shadows or disappear in a puff of smoke.
Instead, he walked through the bedroom door, carefully closing it behind him.
After he left, while I struggled to fall back asleep—too distracted by bossy apprentices and evil fathers, pending quests and betrayals—I realized that I’d demanded to see his face but never asked for his name.